Traduco, specially designed linguistic software made in Italy, is helping Talmudic scholars and translators break the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic language barriers for Project Talmud, the first Italian translation of the Talmud.

The initial volume—tractate Rosh Hashanah—was published earlier this year. Traduco (Italian for “I translate”) was responsible for both the translation and the layout. The software helped organize the translation to follow the complex layout of the Talmud, in this case the standard Babylonian Talmud.

“This is the first time Talmud translation is supported by software,” noted Clelia Piperno, who heads the project. “Traduco suggests words but humans do the translation. As the project develops, there are more and more strings—computerized units of translated words and phrases—and the translation goes faster and faster.”